Cultural Protectors
by Rebecca Hb
Summary: Over a few weeks in Ba Sing Se, Aang keeps running into Dai Li in unusual situations.


**Cultural Protectors**

###

Author's Notes: In order of appearance, the Dai Li in this story are Thanh, Bae, Qin, Tai, and Duyi. The story Bae is telling is "The Black General" as translated by Moss Roberts.

###

Aang looked at the elegant portrait of yet another Earth King and tried not to let his eyes glaze. This was _boring_. Boring, boring, boring. Boooooooooring. Even Momo was bored.

But it was polite. The ministers _really_ wanted to show Zuko the importance of Earth Kingdom culture. Very, very badly. Fortunately, someone had talked them out of letting the Dai Li doing said showing, but...

Aang wondered if he could dive out a window, and if any windows in here actually went outside or if he'd just wind up in another palace corridor.

"Ah, King Hung, the forty-third of the dynasty," A man said thoughtfully.

Aang glanced over his shoulder, startled. There hadn't been anyone behind him before! But there was now, an older Earth Kingdom man with hair an iron-grey. He didn't wear the clothes of a bureaucrat, and his hair was worn in a long braid- Crap, it was a Dai Li. Except he didn't wear the uniform, but he had the hair and the quiet, so...

The man folded his arms behind his back, which made Aang blink, and gazed up at the portrait. "Old Hickory they called him in his day. A rather impressive monarch."

"Why did they call him that?" Aang asked, faintly aware that Zuko and their escorts had paused to wait for him.

The old Dai Li gestured at a cane the Earth King had resting against his throne. Aang hadn't really noticed it before. "He used to carry a hickory cane around and beat people senseless."

Aang stared at the portrait. "... Why?"

"Because he was a fucking lunatic."

###

"Hey, Joo Dee?" Aang picked up a grape and offered it to Momo. He ought to be getting ready for the banquet tonight, but he'd managed to weedle Joo Dee into agreeing that he didn't need to attend _yet another_ one. He was pretty sure Zuko wasn't nearly so lucky, but Zuko had Iroh's tea shop to nip down to if he wanted some time away from his duties.

"Hm?" The dark-haired woman poked her head in from the kitchen and flashed him a brilliant smile. "Is there something you need, Avatar Aang?"

"There was a man today who showed up during the tour of the Earth King portraits. Grey hair, Dai Li braid, but he didn't wear the uniform."

Joo Dee paused as if mentally reviewing dossiers of everyone she knew. Maybe she was. "Did he have a foul mouth?"

Aang nodded, then yelped as Momo leapt off his shoulder and made off with the entire bowl of grapes. "Hey! I was eating those, too!"

"I'll fetch you more," Joo Dee said brightly. "As to the man you met, that was Professor Thanh. He teaches at the Ba Sing Se university. Very respected man."

Aang blinked. "But he's a Dai Li."

"Professor Thanh retired from the Dai Li four years ago, Avatar Aang."

"Oh." Well, he guessed that made sense. Sort of. At least about retiring and why the man hadn't been wearing a Dai Li uniform. Going to teach at the university, that didn't seem to make as much sense. "What does he teach?"

"History!"

Riiiiiiiiiight.

###

"They were about to order their young men to seize Kuo when he began to admonish them. 'You people are old in years but not in experience. I am one who is acquainted with the ways of the world. Listen to what I have to say. When a spirit receives the mandate of heaven to protect an area, is it not the same as a territorial lord receiving the mandate of the Earth King to govern his domain?'"

Aang followed the sound of the storyteller's voice, winding through the courtyards of the Earth Kingdom Palace. He looked around surreptitiously every now and then, checking to make sure the coast was clear before he broke through a wall. He put it back up right afterwards, but people in Ba Sing Se got really _angry_ about wall-breaking.

"'Yes, it is,' they agreed.

'Now then, suppose the territorial lord were angling for illicit pleasures in his realm; would not the Earth King be angry?'"

"Yes!" piped up half a dozen child-like voices.

The storyteller paused. "You kids are wiser than some. 'And if that lord were cruel to people, would not the Earth King punish him?'"

"Yes!"

"Minister Long Feng would," dissented one of them.

The storyteller laughed quietly. "He would. 'Is he whom you call the General a real divinity?'"

Aang rounded a corner and rocked back on his heels. There was a Dai Li agent sitting on the cobblestones by the stream that ran through the Earth Kingdom Palace, a cluster of children all around him. His hands moved as he spoke, and the stone in front of him formed little figures to illustrate the story.

"'Surely no divinity has a pig's foot! Has heaven ever given its mandate to a lustful demonic beast? Indeed, is such a beast not a criminal in heaven as well as on earth?'"

Aang remembered this story. He didn't remember where he remembered it from, if it was even him remembering it or another Avatar remembering it. He frowned, listening as the Dai Li described Kuo chastising the villagers, feeling like he'd not only heard this before, he'd heard-

(Avatar Chien trades stories with Kuo and his new wife over beer in an out-of-the-way village.

Avatar Kyoshi hears the story as a girl growing up, before she ever knows she is an Avatar.)

"'I had the right when I punished the fiend. How could this be wrong? There is no righteous man among you, if you could send your tender girls to a violent death at the hands of a demon year after year! Can you be sure heaven has not sent me to redress these crimes?'"

It's really weird to hear about the deeds of someone who was once your friend a long, long time ago being told as a story to entertain children. But the Earth Kingdom has always made Aang feel _ancient_, between Kyoshi Island, Omashu, and Ba Sing Se. An Earth Avatar would have found this comforting, he was pretty sure, but to him, it's just another bit of the past being held onto when it should be let go.

In another eight hundred years, the Dai Li would be telling of Avatar Aang's battle against Firelord Ozai.

###

"Do you think there'd be any Air Nomad texts in the library here?" Aang asked Joo Dee one day when he could get away from Zuko and the politics long enough to have a whole entire afternoon to himself.

Joo Dee smiled, and Aang tried not to cringe. "If they are not here, there will be some in the university library!"

It didn't take long to reach the university library. Joo Dee led him through the city as if she knew the place like the back of her hand. Joo Dee seemed to know the whole city like the back of her hand, really, and Aang could see why the Dai Li still kept her- them- around. He scowled; Long Feng had better **do** something about Joo Dee, give her a _choice_ about if she wanted to do this or not.

The library bustled with people, talking quietly but so many of them that all the noise was pretty overwhelming. People made way for Joo Dee, though, and Aang followed in her wake. At least until he noted another bubble of space. Then he darted off through the crowd, hopping up onto one of the tables to crane his head and take a look.

There was a Dai Li. He had an entire table to himself and a stack of books at his elbow. His hat perched on the books. He seemed engrossed in reading the book in front of him, except for rolling a bit of quartz between his fingers.

No one went anywhere near him.

Joo Dee materialized next to the table Aang was perching on. "Honored Avatar, I have found a librarian to assist us!"

###

"No idea what you think I can do with this. We were cloth _merchants_, not tailors."

"Thanh needs to know what kind of cloth it is."

"It's _silk_. It cannot more obviously be silk if it were wrapped around a beautiful woman!"

Aang froze mid-step, his eyebrows going way up. Um. That was... descriptive.

Evidently the other guy thought so too, as he stopped talking for a long moment. "-You're sure about that, Tai?"

"Of course I'm sure! Look at this! Look at the weft of the cloth, and the threads- Stop looking at me like that, Duyi. It's soiled and worn, but a good thorough, _careful_ cleaning with warm water and soft soap and someone with a lot of time on their hands, and you will be able to see that it's silk!"

Aang sauntered down the hall towards the people talking, airbending to soften his steps. He peeked around the corner of the door frame and blinked to see a pair of Dai Li looking at a tapestry of some sort.

The bearded one clapped the other one on the shoulder. "Right. You want to let Thanh know or should I take care of it?"

"Aren't you taking that girl out tonight?"

"... No." The bearded Dai Li glanced away, his hand falling from the other one's shoulder.

The younger Dai Li winced and reached out to squeeze his friend's hand. "So, since Xiang's gone and all, Qin hasn't had anyone to drag him out drinking in a few months. Want to grab him and Niran?"

"Sure." The bearded Dai Li's mouth quirked in a smile. "A drunk Niran's always good for a laugh."

Aang darted up towards the ceiling, wedging himself in the angle of the ceiling and the wall as the two Dai Li left the room. The younger one shut the door but neither bothered to lock it. What was the point, in a city of earthbenders and stone?

When they were gone, Aang dropped down and wandered into the room. An ancient, dirty, damaged tapestry lay on a table. It was almost too dirty to make out, but when he touched the edge of it-

("-The hell are you people weaving a tapestry of **me** for?" Avatar Mi Wan demanded.)

He blinked and wondered how the Dai Li had even gotten their hands on a tapestry of the Fire Avatar before Roku.

He wondered why they were restoring it.

###

That night, in his dreams, he was Avatar Kyoshi standing with a man in Dai Li uniform. Kyoshi knew the man, though his name escaped Aang. She knew him very well. He was the first Dai Li, the first person Kyoshi chose for this task, the one she trusted to make sure it would work out smoothly and the Earth King would not turn them into his own assassins and bodyguards.

"Preserve the culture of the Earth Kingdom," the man said. "That's a tall order, Mother."

"Ba Sing Se, first and foremost," Kyoshi replied. "It is a task you are more than capable of. You are one of the finest earthbenders alive - you will be King of Omashu when you grow older."

"I can fight," he disagreed. "But there is more to preserving culture than fighting. There is remembering."

"When have you ever forgotten anything, my boy?"

The first Dai Li smiled.

**-End-**


End file.
